Depress ctrl and + keys together to increase text size; depress ctrl and – keys together to reduce

Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatry, life-long Mother Nature lover and activist, replied to the cruise ship and sea pollution part of yesterday’s Merry Christmas from various first, do no harm and dead poets societies, not to be confused with the Mother Nature-raping Cudjoe Regional Sewer System, going green Key West’s dirtiest, worst possible cruise ships, and the good Christian Dallas Presbyterian Hospital post at www.goodmorningkeywest.com:

Sloan: cruise ships use the ocean as a garbage disposal unit !!
We on shallow water —people have to swim in SEWAGE.
and then the risk of what could be a lethal infection—MRSA:
more cruise ships more risk—-not to mention their spewing carcinogens like nitrous dioxide and all its cousins choking our airways.
Do the commissioners ever consider Health of the citizens and tourists.????
they seem to have no conception of what they are promoting and supporting—-the majority probably voted for more and larger
Cruise killers——————-health is actually more important than money—in this case extra bucks—(-sickening -without the cruise ships we would have a reef.—living and beautiful-)—-Jerry

I replied:

Jerry, your question re the commissioners (and thus the mayor) is facetious, or it is naive.

The mayor categorically denied at a candidate forum that there was any MRSA in the water around Key West, and then he said water was clean and beautiful. He, and the commissioners, need years of psychotherapy to become honest people about the environment and what going green really means. The ballot box did not make them honest, because the voters did not want honest people in office, who put the environment first, or even fifth.

To my knowledge, I am the only person who went before the mayor and commissioners at city commission meetings and got onto them about the MRSA threat in the water, and water pollution generally, and cruise ships. Me. Jerry. One person. Not Last Stand. Not Naja Girard. Not Jolly Benson. Not Reef Relief. Me. And Brian LaPointe, who once spoke to them about chemical runoff coming down from the mainland into the bay of Florida. I hope that’s not a correct head count, but it’s what I am looking at.

Do you see what the problem is? It’s in the electorate. It’s in the environmental camp. I’m dealing with much the same up the Keys, with people who are railing against F-1 grinder pumps in Cudjoe Regional Sewer District.

Sloan

Jerry wrote:

SLOAN: None of that —-it was an ironic JOKE——-these guys could run a Holocaust concentration camp—without flickering an eye lash

No MRSA—these guys either are in denial or are totally brain dead..

They need a bona fide, genuine treatment plant and hook everyone in the lower keys up to
it.—just take some $$$$ out of their pockets.—-they are just plain MORONS for the record,
commissioners and Mayor——what other conclusion is there——hang in—we fight the good fight—-Jerry
CRUISE SHIPS IN OUR SHALLOW WATERS ARE LETHAL !!!!!

I replied:

:-), ironic joke was what I sort of had in mind when I said facetious. I would expand the treatment plant in the lower Keys to treating minds :-), figure long term program, perhaps the angels are interested, as I am not sanguine human methods would be terribly effective, although I have heard stories of keel-hauling backwards sometimes having a salutary effect :-).

Jerry told me that for decades he had a full psychiatric practice in Key West, and was the school board’s psychiatrist. He quit diving and swimming in the ocean around Key West, after getting violently ill from swimming here. Here are some pretty MRSA pictures.

Moving slightly up US 1 …

From Key West the Newspaper (www.thebluepaper.com):

I replied to Banks Prevatt’s email:

Interesting, and, I suppose, I might be able to guess who, or pretty close. I wonder how the angels will sing to me in dreams about this?

I still wonder why the angels didn’t have me all over this back when I might could have made an impact, such as when I ran against George Neugent in 2010? I didn’t know there was a problem in Cudjoe Regional, until after I sold my place on Little Torch in late August 2013, and was living in Key West for about a month.

The only reason I can come up with for the angels not waking me up to the problem before then, was they made it very clear to me once, that I cannot do the work they give me to do correctly, if I am looking to get anything back from the people I am trying to help, and, as it turned out, my place on Little Torch ended up being slated to have a grinder pump, and that gave me a dog in that fight, which I did not have after I sold my place.

Even so, that still feels bizarre to me; I mean, the shit the angels get onto me about every night, almost, about what I’m not doing to suit them, and they let Cudjoe Regional slide all those years. Imagine the stink I could have raised during the 2010 county commission race; a real issue, instead of all the philosophical and political yammering, and the huge commotion the angels had me make against No Name Key being put onto the electric grid. In my stupid human opinion, No Name Key going electric was a molecule compared to Jupiter, which was Cudjoe Regional Sewer District.

That said, Banks, it has not helped Dump the Pumps’ camp, for the people who actually knew something, who could have made a difference perhaps even before 2010, to have hidden in the bushes because they feared retaliation from their employers: either Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority or Monroe County, I think there are such people working in both places, who are in Dump the Pumps’ camp. Maybe, however, certainly I hope so, the article in the blue paper will cause the tide to turn in Dump the Pumps’ favor.

If you read my post this morning at goodmorningkeywest.com, you saw it led off with my describing dreams last night, in which George Neugent, Arnaud and Naja Girard, Heather Carruthers and Dennis Ward got onto me for not having yet read, or mentioned, the Cudjoe Regional article in the blue paper, which tells me the angels think that article is really important.

Sloan

Not long after, this email came from Harry Powell, who has no qualms about painting bulls-eyes on himself, as was learned years ago, when he chained himself strapped with dynamite to a tree in Key West’s Peary Court, when it was still a public park and ball field, to protect the Navy turning it into a housing project. For his good efforts, Harry did time behind bars.

I replied:

Hi, Harry - don’t understand why you sent me the old (2005) newspaper article and the legal papers. Where were the people concerned about sewers in the lower Keys, when I ran against George Neugent in 2006, and again in 2010? When I could have made a lot of noise about it? I can’t get wound up reading proposed findings prepared by paid liars who represent government and utlility liars, either. I can’t get revved up, when people who actually could have made a difference, because they knew the technology and that it was bad news, would not come forward, because they worked for either Monroe County or Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority. I learned today that the author of the blue paper article did not write it, but it was written by someone who does not wish to be exposed publicly. I learned that from someone who darn well ought to know, as you well know. I wish Dump the Pumps, et. al. good luck, but I don’t see anything else I can do. The County Commission is not a way. FKAA is not a way. Florida Department of Environmental Protection is not a way. The only way I see is a judge straightens it out, or it doesn’t get straightened out. I still think the best chance at the beginning was not to sign FKAA’s grinder pump easement agreement, but I doubt enough property owners would have gone that route to make any difference. Even after Dump the Pumps got going, some of its members signed the easement agreement. The final straw, for me, was George Neugent carried his own voting district, where the F-1 grinder pumps were going in. Sloan

A good friend, who used to live on Summerland Key, wrote yesterday about Cudjoe Regional Sewer District:

__________ and I visited friends on Summerland Key over Thanksgiving and everyone was bitching about what a boondoggle the sewer system was. It was apparently due to go live this past April and I’m told the new date is next April. All the roads in Summerland Cove have battle scars from the big dig there. I wonder if the county will ever restore them to pristine condition.

I replied:

Tearing up the US 1 roadside was required to install the new Cudjoe Regional sewer main, pumping stations and lateral connections along US 1. Ditto, essentially, for installing other smaller lines on side and feeder roads. That’s not the problem, but it is inconvenient. The problem is what the blue paper guest editorial says about E-1 grinder pumps, and they intend to use shallow injection wells, instead of a deep injection well. And, based on the guest editorial, the treatment plant on Cudjoe Key will be too small. It’s all about saving money, and somebody getting paid off.

I don’t know why the angels didn’t jump on me to get involved in that, when I was snoozing on Little Torch Key. Uncharacteristic of them to let me snooze through something like that. They waited until I had moved back to Key West to jump on me about it. By then, the horse was out of the barn everywhere but on Big Pine Key, and it maybe out of the barn there, now.

County Commissioner George Neugent was a royal horse’s ass throughout the entire affair, yet he carried the entire Cudjoe Regional sewer district in his bid for a 5th term this year, against a Republican challenger in the Republican Primary, and then against a Democrat challenger in the general election, both of whom got a lot more votes than I received each of the two times I ran against George, 2006 and 2010 - fools errands, the benefit from which I don’t yet see.

For all I can tell, I should have lived the entire time in Key West, instead of the 4 1/2 years on Little Torch Key. That would have saved me a lot of money, given the beating I took when I sold the Little Torch property. But then, maybe living all the time in Key West would have driven me insane, for real, or gotten me killed, for real.

I don’t know when they hope, intend, to have the new sewer system up and running. If the litigation prevails, it might be FKAA will have to go back and start a lot of it all over, but probably not the main lines on US 1, or anywhere gravity main lines were used along side and feeder roads into US 1.

And, FKAA might have to convert to deep injection well, and maybe enlarge, or rebuild, the main treatment plant.

Aren’t you glad you sold your place on Summerland and don’t have all of that to worry you nearly to death?

Hope all lovely for you and _________.

Sloan

On a different battle front, stemming from the many articles the blue paper and I published

re Key West cops killing Charles Eimers, received from National Public Radio, at the request of my oldest first Bashinsky cousin, Leo, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama:

Michael Bell Sr. (center) and his family stand near one of the billboards they bought in a campaign to bring awareness to internal police investigations. Bell’s son was shot and killed by police in Kenosha, Wis.

Courtesy of the Bell family

Race is at the forefront of the current debate over the police use of deadly force. But one shooting in Wisconsin highlights another factor at play when police shoot civilians — the lack of outside investigation. And the decade-old death has led to real reform in the state.

Ten years ago, 21-year-old Michael Bell Jr. pulled up to the house where he lived with his mom and sister in Kenosha, Wis., about an hour south of Milwaukee. A police officer who, according to a police report chose to follow Bell after observing his driving, arrived shortly after. A subsequent toxicology report showed that Bell had been drinking that night.

Dash cam footage from inside the squad car shows Bell exiting the vehicle he was driving, where he was confronted by the officer. The two walked off-camera, where police tried to arrest him. A struggle ensued, and while his mom and sister watched from the house, Bell was shot, point-blank, in the head.

Bell’s father, Michael Sr., says he’ll never forget the phone call he received on the night of Nov. 9, 2004, from his oldest daughter.

“She called me up: ‘Dad, you need to come to the hospital, Michael’s been shot.’ And then she told me it was by a police officer,” Bell says. “And I just I figured it might’ve been shot in the leg or shot in the arm … but I came to find out that an officer placed a gun directly to my son’s temple and took his life.”

Gina Barton, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s law enforcement investigative reporter, covered the story back in 2004. She says that what led to the shooting was one of the officers shouting, “He’s got my gun.”

“And another officer thought that Mike Bell was trying to disarm his partner,” Barton says.

Barton says Bell’s mother and sister, who were watching the altercation unfold, heard the officer as well and they tried to yell that Michael Bell did not have the officer’s gun.

“But apparently, they either didn’t hear that or disregarded it,” Barton says.

The Kenosha Police Department’s detective division and internal affairs division immediately conducted an investigation. Barton says it didn’t take long. Within 48 hours, the department had determined that the shooting was justified, that the use of force was proper and that none of the officers had done anything wrong.

“It wasn’t until later that we realized just how little of an investigation had been done,” Barton says. “[They] basically just accepted the officers’ version of events. So they were cleared really quickly.”

i

An unarmed Michael Bell Jr. was shot and killed by Kenosha police officers in front of his parents’ home in 2004. The actions of the officers involved were deemed justified after an internal investigation.

Courtesy of the Bell family

As a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Michael Bell Sr. says he’s been a part of mishap investigations before. He was expecting a long, drawn-out investigation into his own son’s death — not a decision made by the same police department in just a couple of days.

“I was just completely appalled,” Bell says. He says he knew the police had not even talked to the witnesses or gotten the report back from the crime lab. “So to clear themselves in 48 hours, I was just completely flabbergasted.”

Bell says the family was in shock as they went through the difficult grieving process and were trying to make funeral arrangements, so he cautioned patience. But after lab reports finally came back, Michael Bell Jr.’s DNA and fingerprints were not found on the officer’s gun.

So in 2010, Bell launched his own investigation.

“I finally made a decision that we’re never going to get to the truth of the matter, unless we bring in our own personal investigators,” he says. “So we hired an investigative consultant who teamed up with a retired Kenosha police detective.”

Gina Barton, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, says that one of the experts hired by Bell came up with a theory that the gun had probably gotten caught on the rear-view mirror of the car near the scuffle. That mirror was in fact broken after the incident.

“The officer probably thought he had grabbed the gun, because why would an officer say that?” Barton says. “But as far as I can tell, it was a miscommunication and a misunderstanding that lead to [Bell’s] death.”

In a statement made in 2010, which the police department forwarded this December in response to NPR’s request for comment, Police Chief John Morrissey from the Kenosha Police Department said, in part:

“The investigation showed that the actions of the officers were reasonable, appropriate and well within Kenosha Police Department policy, procedure, and training. I am fully confident that the officer’s actions complied with the Kenosha Police Department’s use of force guidelines.”

Barton says that Wisconsin has had many officer-involved shootings and custody deaths. One of the problems that a lot of people in the community have with these situations is that the officer’s own department will investigate the use of force.

“So if you know this officer, if you’ve worked with him before, can you really be objective in terms of evaluating that shooting? And is it really proper for the police to be policing themselves?” Barton says.

The Bell family ended up filing a civil suit for wrongful death. Six years later, they received a $1.75 million settlement. But there was no admission of wrongdoing, and the police maintained that Michael Bell Jr. caused his own death.

The family used the settlement money to fund a grassroots campaign. They took out ads in the New York Times, in USA Today and on radio and created TV commercials.

The campaigning went on for years, but Barton says the message really gained momentum after another police incident in 2011, where a 22-year-old man died in the backseat of a police car. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

Bell bought every available billboard in Milwaukee with slogans like: “When Police Kill, Should They Judge Themselves?”

“After we created enough ruckus, the unions ended up sitting down with us and talking with us,” Bell says. They told him that if he wanted to take the billboards down, they would work with him in crafting some the legislation he sought.

“I had formulated in my mind what really needed to occur here to make this process better,” he says.

The law they put forth would make Wisconsin the first state in the nation to mandate, on the legislative level, that if an officer was involved with a loss of life, that outside investigators must come in and collect the data and investigate that shooting.

This past April, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker passed the bill into law.

Gina Barton says Bell was able to work with politicians on both sides of the aisle, and sold the bill as benefiting both the family members of whoever died as well as the officers involved.

“Because if you actually did do everything right, why wouldn’t you want a transparent investigation that clears you and that shows everybody why you did the right thing?” she says.

Bell recognizes that their accomplishment with the bill happened with the help of the police. Five police units were even present when Gov. Walker signed the bill.

“I’m not against law enforcement, even though a law officer killed my son,” Bell says. “And I do recognize that a number of police officers risk their life to protect people. In fact, police officers need to be part of the solution.”

I replied to NPR:

Thanks, however, if the victim and the police officer walked away from the victim’s car, and away from the car the victim was shot by a pistol pressed against his head, by the first officer, or by his partner officer, I don’t see how the rear-view mirror/theory was in play.

Last today,

did you know there are 8 teen gangs in Key West?

I didn’t know there were any teen gangs in Key West, until day before yesterday, when I was walking in my neighborhood and bumped into Heidi Golightly with what appeared to be a 15-year, or so, old boy, helping her remove graffiti from a concrete power pole near where I live. Heidi said it was one of her Keys to Be the Change projects. I said, well, I hoped she didn’t remove the fun graffiti. She said, no, only what local teen gangs were putting up, as messages to other teen gangs. Cuban gang messages to Haitian gang, etc.

I asked, how many teen gangs are there in Key West? Eight, Heidi said. Wow, I had no idea. I said I might write about that at goodmorningkeywest.com. Did she have a website? Heidi told me to go to her Facebook page. And, she said, the Citizen had an article coming the next day about it, yesterday. I said I would use that article, and her and my conversation, and her Facebook page in a post. She said, okay. However, I did not see the article yesterday, which led to this Facebook chat yesterday.

• 

  9:00am

  Sloan Bashinsky

  I don’t see an article re gangs in today’s citizen, so am sitting on our yesterday’s conversation, for now, but I think it’s important. Thanks
• 

  9:34am

  Heidi Golightly

  Today was about another program Keys to Be the Change offers.
• 

  9:37am

  Sloan Bashinsky

  They are going to run a gangs article?
• 

  10:00am

  Sloan Bashinsky

  Where in today’s Citizen is the Keys to Be the Change article? I’m looking for it, but maybe don’t know what to look for.
• 

  11:36am

  Heidi Golightly

  The Schools Page front section entire color page write-up!

• 

  11:53am

  Sloan Bashinsky

  thanks, there it is in plain view, good for you; do you know if, when, they will do an article on gangs?

The Citizen article was on Keys to Be the Change providing students with away from school reading help.

Heidi, center, with some of her Keys to Be the Change helpers, receiving an award at a city commission meeting.

I wonder if the Citizen will tell its readers there are eight teen gangs in Key West?

I wonder if the blue paper will chat up Heidi about gangs, and report it?

I wonder what else the fun angels will dump on me to relieve my boredom?

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com